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Honestly the government should just dole out a certain amount of money (have them require a certain number of signatures from people in their riding as a filter) for each candidate, and that is all they get for their campaign. Not even allowed to spend out of pocket, or accept donations. Government would strictly oversee campaign finances, and any candidate that overspends is immediately disqualified regardless of backing.

PM set to nominate 10 Tory peers

There's democracy, look you now!

There must be close to 900 of the bastards now.

 Crazyterran wrote:
Honestly the government should just dole out a certain amount of money (have them require a certain number of signatures from people in their riding as a filter) for each candidate, and that is all they get for their campaign. Not even allowed to spend out of pocket, or accept donations. Government would strictly oversee campaign finances, and any candidate that overspends is immediately disqualified regardless of backing.

In principle maybe, but in practice this is likely to force the influencing money underground. Keeping donations reasonably transparent at least allows voters to make a judgement on who their favourite politician is shilling for!

 Crazyterran wrote:
Honestly the government should just dole out a certain amount of money (have them require a certain number of signatures from people in their riding as a filter) for each candidate, and that is all they get for their campaign. Not even allowed to spend out of pocket, or accept donations. Government would strictly oversee campaign finances, and any candidate that overspends is immediately disqualified regardless of backing.

You want the GOVERNMENT to oversee and regulate political campaigning?

Yep. Great idea. Can't possibly go wrong and be abused by an authoritarian Government.

Have the judiciary oversee and enforce it, let government set reasonable spending limits on a per candidate basis, that is the same for all candidates regardless of riding, position, etc.

Though I suppose i didnt specify which part of government oversaw what, but obviously parliament isnt going to enforce parliaments 'get elected' budget.

Look's like Trump is asking for more British troops in Afghanistan, and it looks like our spineless government will roll up the white flag and agree.

The man who accused British intelligence of spying on him, and the man who was criticising us over the Iran deal, suddenly needs our help?

There should be a great big middle finger being directed towards Trump.

I was under this naïve belief that the US military, was the most powerful in the world.

As if a few hundred extra British troops will make a difference.

I've been arguing for months that British troops should be pulled out of there and deployed in the Baltic, in which doing so could win us brownie points with Baltic EU/NATO members.

Might have won us some allies in the Brexit talks.

Oh FFS. Iraq and Afghanistan are never ending nightmares.

I was opposed to the deployment of British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan 15 years ago, and I oppose it now.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Oh FFS. Iraq and Afghanistan are never ending nightmares.

I was opposed to the deployment of British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan 15 years ago, and I oppose it now.

You and me both.

I read somewhere that De Gaulle was never anything but rude and offensive towards the Americans, but they seemed to respect him more than the British who would agree to every request.

Maybe there's a lesson there?

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


There should be a great big middle finger being directed towards Trump.

ref

Might have won us some allies in the Brexit talks.

as to why we won't be arguing with the USA.

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Whirlwind wrote:


I find it utterly bizarre that so many people are interested about the wedding of two random people that you will never know or otherwise care about. It would be like going to the wedding of Rupert Murdoch. Just why?

Some People like weddings
Some People like celebs
Some People like the Royal's
Some People will just use it as a excuse for a bit of a do with friends - party, BBQ etc
Many people like Prince Harry - who has actually served his country in the military
Many people like Megan - who seems nice, confident and a nice bridge between two countries.
Some people will be making money out of it
The News channels love it..

If you like weddings become a wedding planner
Like celebs, in my view, is living your life through someone else's actions and distracting from your own.
How can you like the royals, people you have never met? That's a bit like saying you like the rail conductor on a train you've never been on. If you look at it from a perspective that they are just normal human beings no different to you or me then that statement makes no sense. They are not put there by some higher power and God definitely doesn't save the queen.
Why do you need an excuse to have a get together with friends on a nice weekend?
Lots of people have served their country in much more harrowing conditions than Harry will ever have had to do. Do we watch their weddings?
Again I point out how you like someone when you have never met them?
True people will fleece people for some daft tat but then that wouldn't exist except for those that actually follow some things.
You are correct about the news, WWIII could break out, there could be a huge asteroid impact and aliens could land and two random people getting married will still be top of the news.

So that's it then - Britain on the scrapheap.

Let down by feeble and incompetent politicians who probably think vision is a brand of window cleaner...

A few years back, there was a documentary about wildlife in the River Thames.

The native British crayfish were being killed by invasive crayfish from China and America...

And I thought at the time that was a metaphor for the future. China and America fighting over the carcass of Britain...

Admiral Nelson must be spinning in his grave...

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Oh FFS. Iraq and Afghanistan are never ending nightmares.

I was opposed to the deployment of British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan 15 years ago, and I oppose it now.

These are two different issues. Iraq was always a dodgy decision based on the reasoning given. Afghanistan we are there at the behest of the government. From memory I think a lot of drugs were grown there and this was funding terrorists so hence being there does help potentially prevent attacks elsewhere in the world.

I do not disagree that May will again roll up the flag to Trump. It is not a good sign for the trade negotiations where we are willing to not challenge anything. In reality Trump wants to bring US troops home, he has no worries about replacing them with other country's people.

Still with Theresa May he doesn't need Stormy Daniels anymore. May is quite willing to bend over as far as Trump wants to pander to whatever fetish he dreams up.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
So that's it then - Britain on the scrapheap.

Let down by feeble and incompetent politicians who probably think vision is a brand of window cleaner... ...

The system gives us poor politicians because they are taught how to spin for the best interests of their party. The U.K. Populace are unwilling to break the mould and have become 'territorial' in their voting patterns. It is inevitable.

The Americans are also sending more troops to Ganners.

Our policy is to support them with a 10% allocation. This not only to show support to the US, it is suppoting NATO/the Western Alliance in general and to encourage other allies such as France to do their bit.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The Americans are also sending more troops to Ganners.

Our policy is to support them with a 10% allocation. This not only to show support to the US, it is suppoting NATO/the Western Alliance in general and to encourage other allies such as France to do their bit.

To me, the USA backing Israel has always made zero sense from a geo-politics perspective.

So if I'm criticising the Americans for that, then I have to be equally critical of Britain kamikaze foreign policy.

Afghanistan? Why? WHY?

In the days of the Raj, then yeah, makes perfect sense. But now? We don't trade with them, nor border them.

If that country falls to the Taliban tomorrow, then Britain has lost nothing in a geo strategic sense.

Maybe we could send our new aircraft carrier there?

Afghanistan 2: Electric Boogaloo.

 Whirlwind wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Oh FFS. Iraq and Afghanistan are never ending nightmares.

I was opposed to the deployment of British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan 15 years ago, and I oppose it now.

These are two different issues. Iraq was always a dodgy decision based on the reasoning given. Afghanistan we are there at the behest of the government. From memory I think a lot of drugs were grown there and this was funding terrorists so hence being there does help potentially prevent attacks elsewhere in the world.

I do not disagree that May will again roll up the flag to Trump. It is not a good sign for the trade negotiations where we are willing to not challenge anything. In reality Trump wants to bring US troops home, he has no worries about replacing them with other country's people.

Still with Theresa May he doesn't need Stormy Daniels anymore. May is quite willing to bend over as far as Trump wants to pander to whatever fetish he dreams up.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
So that's it then - Britain on the scrapheap.

Let down by feeble and incompetent politicians who probably think vision is a brand of window cleaner... ...

The system gives us poor politicians because they are taught how to spin for the best interests of their party. The U.K. Populace are unwilling to break the mould and have become 'territorial' in their voting patterns. It is inevitable.

If I were 20 years younger, I might be tempted to have a crack at parliament, do a Martin Bell and elected as an independent, and put the fear of God into them, but now?

Not with my wooden bladder

 Whirlwind wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Whirlwind wrote:


I find it utterly bizarre that so many people are interested about the wedding of two random people that you will never know or otherwise care about. It would be like going to the wedding of Rupert Murdoch. Just why?

Some People like weddings
Some People like celebs
Some People like the Royal's
Some People will just use it as a excuse for a bit of a do with friends - party, BBQ etc
Many people like Prince Harry - who has actually served his country in the military
Many people like Megan - who seems nice, confident and a nice bridge between two countries.
Some people will be making money out of it
The News channels love it..

If you like weddings become a wedding planner
Like celebs, in my view, is living your life through someone else's actions and distracting from your own.
How can you like the royals, people you have never met? That's a bit like saying you like the rail conductor on a train you've never been on. If you look at it from a perspective that they are just normal human beings no different to you or me then that statement makes no sense. They are not put there by some higher power and God definitely doesn't save the queen.
Why do you need an excuse to have a get together with friends on a nice weekend?
Lots of people have served their country in much more harrowing conditions than Harry will ever have had to do. Do we watch their weddings?
Again I point out how you like someone when you have never met them?
True people will fleece people for some daft tat but then that wouldn't exist except for those that actually follow some things.
You are correct about the news, WWIII could break out, there could be a huge asteroid impact and aliens could land and two random people getting married will still be top of the news.

Ha I work in the wedding industry - you donlt often get that much time to enjoy them! And if you do its a different thing - making someones day special etc.

People like different things - neither of us have any right to tell them to want or like or not to like watching the royal wedding......?

People on this (like me) forum"waste" money and time on playing with toy soldiers not sure we are in any posiiton to judge.

How can you like any celebs - yeah they are just human beings - but if you know that and like watching pretty people is that such a bad thing.

Why need an excuse to meet up - thats life - its fun to have a reason - this is as good as any other

Lots of people have not served, I haven't - I respect people who have.

I like Kate Beckinsale - or at least her public persona - will I meet her - I might - fairly unlikely and do I even want to meet her - maybe not - the fantasy is fine. I have met film stars and royals and most have in fact been nice human beings - do i still like seeing interviews, programmes, phots of them - yep - and not alone - otherwise why do we have chat shows etc - Now the power of celeb may be too much now but is it all bad - not in my opinion.

News - people need something other than bad news otherwise a) people switch off and it actually has less impact in my view.

None of this is new - it was happening with Ceasar and Cleopatra and way before then and will be happening in the far future I expect.

Is it really such a bad thing? None of those reasons work for you but for hundreds of millions on Saturday they are more than enough.

lastly - well you don't have to take part or watch it do you ?

Trick is successfully avoiding.

In that respect, it's like the World Cup or X-Factor. I don't give two hoots about football. And I actively loathe X-Factor and all it's ilk.

Yeah. Try actually avoiding them.

Well I'm working tomorrow so that's not a problem. I have a feeling the shopfront will be pretty quite in the afternoon though.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Trick is successfully avoiding.

In that respect, it's like the World Cup or X-Factor. I don't give two hoots about football. And I actively loathe X-Factor and all it's ilk.

Yeah. Try actually avoiding them.

Its really not difficult to avoid - just stick a computer game on for a couple of hours

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Trick is successfully avoiding.

In that respect, it's like the World Cup or X-Factor. I don't give two hoots about football. And I actively loathe X-Factor and all it's ilk.

Yeah. Try actually avoiding them.

Dead easy. I've seen less than an hour of footage, all in all, of Big Brother, X-Factor, Britain's Got Talent, Pop Idol and every other "reality" series so far this millennium. I've been lucky in that I don't have to put up with anyone around me who does watch them, but actually avoiding the shows themselves is not a problem.

I don't understand why the North Eastern line can't make money.

Seems profitable under national control. Maybe if privatisation didn’t involve shareholders and fat cat management trying to wring every penny for themselves rather than the good of the line, you’d get a better service. I suspect a lot of the problems in privately run public services come from individuals trying to get bonuses and quickly further their own career by making short term efficiency savings that cause long term damage.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nationalised-east-coast-rail-line-returns-209m-to-taxpayers-8866157.html%3famp

The repeated insistence on reprivatising it is ideological not financial.

In effect it seems that the East Coast line can make money, but only when held in the stultifying grip of public ownership and bureaucracy. Yet when run by efficient, agile modern private management, it's a dismal failure despite large government subsidies.

It is going to require a fair bit of cognitive dissonance to process this and come up with the solution that the railways should be privatised.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't understand why the North Eastern line can't make money.

It does; it’s running in profit even now. It’s just the stupid way that the franchises are awarded, which favours companies that make the largest promised payment to the government, rather than the ones with the most realistic business case.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
In effect it seems that the East Coast line can make money, but only when held in the stultifying grip of public ownership and bureaucracy. Yet when run by efficient, agile modern private management, it's a dismal failure despite large government subsidies.

It is going to require a fair bit of cognitive dissonance to process this and come up with the solution that the railways should be privatised.

While I’m generally in favour of nationalisation, I do recognise that it isn’t perfect and can be inefficient; there can be a place for private companies. However I think that it works much better under a TFL style model, where you have a consolidated public organisation providing the point of service, i.e. the organisation says “we need three trains an hour between these two places” and then the private companies bid to provide that service under the banner of the public organisation. The second change I believe is needed is that rather than just looking at the relative costs of private company bids, there should always be a public bid too (i.e. what would it cost to do it ourselves). So in the cases where the private sector can find efficiencies and fund their profits from that, great, everyone wins, but where they’re just going to slap profits on top of public sector running costs, they can be told to get lost.

Of course that would require the Tories to admit that private enterprise isn’t always the best solution, which is never going to happen.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
PM set to nominate 10 Tory peers

There's democracy, look you now!

TBF to May one of her campaign pledges was to , err, to tackle its size...




meanwhile ..






.. well it's bound to be a success now then if


curses !

And the Tory party is concerned by the fall in their membership, so are coming up with ideas to make it more enticing :



"We don't know how many businesses would want to take part..."

.. well that's one way of putting it eh ?

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Seems profitable under national control. Maybe if privatisation didn’t involve shareholders and fat cat management trying to wring every penny for themselves rather than the good of the line, you’d get a better service. I suspect a lot of the problems in privately run public services come from individuals trying to get bonuses and quickly further their own career by making short term efficiency savings that cause long term damage.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nationalised-east-coast-rail-line-returns-209m-to-taxpayers-8866157.html%3famp

The repeated insistence on reprivatising it is ideological not financial.

Yep. That happened here with Belfast City Council's waste collection service, even though it's still under public ownership. "Route Optimization" they called it. Designed to get the guys doing more work in their day and to save money on overtime and agency support. I was there, and last time I checked it cost the city an extra £1.5 million that year in hiring agency workers and hire lorries to cover the chaos it caused. Everything that could go wrong went wrong; letters warning people that their bin day had changed ended up in a skip because they cheaped out on the couriers and got some little mickey mouse operation to do it. So the squad would go around their route to find nothing out and thus they return to base after only two hours, but union rules said that having done that they were done for the day period and couldn't be made to go back out. So agency workers in a hired lorry (total cost per week per squad: £7000) had to be sent out to do it instead. And because they crammed too much stuff together into one route, some runs were impossible to finish in one day, thus requiring parts to be sectioned off to more agency workers, costing even more.

The guy they brought in to do this (at considerable cost) told them that the city (which is growing btw) would require an extra seven squads to get adequate coverage. But management wanted to do it with five less squads than they currently have. So they took his plan and chopped it up and messed it around. Then, when it failed, they tried to pin the blame on him. Only when he threatened to expose them (with proof) did they back down. Why hire somebody for consolation if you're going to ignore their advance? His plans worked three times before in other cities by the way, so he knows what he's talking about.

Despite all this, those managers where able to claim that they cut costs and improved efficiency, and thus they pocketed huge bonuses before doing a runner. And you know how? All those agency workers and hired lorries, the extra 1.5 million, were "off the record" and wouldn't show up in official spending reports. It has to be criminal. But then again, it's small fry when compared to the Renewable Heating Incentive. Northern Ireland is an incredibly corrupt place from top to bottom.

My point is, it's far too easy for management to make (incredibly) short term gains to claim massive bonus payments before running off before the inevitable consequences of their action hits. There must be a way to stop it.

 Mr Morden wrote:


Ha I work in the wedding industry - you donlt often get that much time to enjoy them! And if you do its a different thing - making someones day special etc.

People like different things - neither of us have any right to tell them to want or like or not to like watching the royal wedding......?

People on this (like me) forum"waste" money and time on playing with toy soldiers not sure we are in any posiiton to judge.

How can you like any celebs - yeah they are just human beings - but if you know that and like watching pretty people is that such a bad thing.

Why need an excuse to meet up - thats life - its fun to have a reason - this is as good as any other

Lots of people have not served, I haven't - I respect people who have.

I like Kate Beckinsale - or at least her public persona - will I meet her - I might - fairly unlikely and do I even want to meet her - maybe not - the fantasy is fine. I have met film stars and royals and most have in fact been nice human beings - do i still like seeing interviews, programmes, phots of them - yep - and not alone - otherwise why do we have chat shows etc - Now the power of celeb may be too much now but is it all bad - not in my opinion.

News - people need something other than bad news otherwise a) people switch off and it actually has less impact in my view.

None of this is new - it was happening with Ceasar and Cleopatra and way before then and will be happening in the far future I expect.

Is it really such a bad thing? None of those reasons work for you but for hundreds of millions on Saturday they are more than enough.

lastly - well you don't have to take part or watch it do you ?

I think you've taken the comments too literally. The point is that all of these can be done without going crazy over random people signing a piece of worthless paper. It is, in my view, a waste of precious hours watching someone else do something, living your life through the actions of others. I have no issue with people playing toy soldiers because they are living their life. If people don't do the same things for anyone else than that would imply other issues at play. My view, simplistically is that it these things are staged to reinforce loyalty to the state by the populace through psychological conditioning and to make people think they are part of something 'special'. In reality there is no difference to joe blogs' wedding and this one apart from the fact the state pays a lot of money to support the latter. For some reason the relatives of those people that stabbed, murdered or imprisoned there way to that position of power are given more consideration? To be fair that is what the state really uses the royal family for, a means to try and keep us in line and maintain their control - that's even seen in the national anthem where people sing about God save the old woman with the handbag.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 reds8n wrote:

Spoiler:

Is he trying to say things would be more successful if we eradicated Wrexi?

.. well it's bound to be a success now then if

Spoiler:

curses !

Do you think people actually listen to themselves? It sounds like there is secret underground badger cells. Still if the government is being defeated by a group of wild animals it definitely shows up the quality of the government. If they are being given the run around by badgers you can imagine what the Wrexit negotiations are like.

the Tory party is concerned by the fall in their membership, so are coming up with ideas to make it more enticing :

Spoiler:

"We don't know how many businesses would want to take part..."

.. well that's one way of putting it eh ?

Barring my general concern about political parties trying to buy votes an support. Weather spoons might support it...probably a good fit. We'll take your money and in return you get a plate of ****.

Well, on the whole, I think that went well. Nice day out to wave a flag and wot not.